A break-in at her store on Dec. 10 was definitely not the Christmas gift she was hoping for, said Owner of Summerhill Florist, Colette Storms.
Storms said she received a call from a staff member telling her the business on Summerfield Boulevard had been broken into and a hole had been made in the drywall between her store and Five Star Communications next door.
“I received a phone call at about 7:30 a.m. saying we’d been broken into. Somebody had broken through our front door,” Storms said. “They had to know exactly where to break through. They had definitely cased us out because there’s only one specific place they could break through to get to (Five Star’s) back room. I think they were after (Five Star’s) safe. Because we didn’t have a security system, they went through us to get to Five Star.”
According to Storms, the motion detectors at Five Star went off, alerting RCMP and the owner.
According to Airdrie RCMP Media Liaison Constable Jason Curtis officers were called to the scene by an employee at Five Star who had arrived to find the hole in the wall between the two businesses.
“It was reported to us at 6:15 a.m.,” Curtis said. “They found someone had attempted to pry open their safe. They didn’t get into it, though.”
“Exhibits were seized, specifically tools, and sent off to our Forensic Identification Section,” he said. “There was no video surveillance and no witnesses.” The thieves got away with Storms’ credit card processing machine and part of the store’s Point of Sale system, though Storms said both will be useless because they don’t contain any customer information.
“On their way out, they decided to take 12 roses out of a vase in the cooler,” she added. “They must not have been hungry. There were about 12 gourmet gift baskets in the back room and they left those.”
Storms said she believes Five Star was the target.
“(Five Star employees) felt bad because we were broken into when they were the target and we felt bad because we didn’t have the security system in place and we were an easy in for someone,” she said.
She said she’s sure one of the perpetrators was a woman because footprints left behind are smaller and with a pointed toe.
“It could have been so much worse. I have so much glassware in there for Christmas right now,” she said. “They were very specific because they knew exactly where to drill that hole.”
The incident has caused Storms extra stress.
“We had to get the wall fixed, we had to get a new lock on the door and I had to have an IT guy come in for a couple of hours,” she said. “We didn’t even have Internet so we couldn’t take orders. It’s just that extra stress.”
Storms said the incident prompted her to install a security system and put some protocols in place for staff should this happen again.
“It’s a sign of the times in Airdrie. Those days of just having one little lock on the front door (are over),” she said.
Calls to Five Star were not returned by press time.
